|
|
|
|
|
|
|
His Name - Ertai Vexic Captain
|
 Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:31 pm
 that City of Sin... no man could ever name... Darkness boiling over this mechanical hell, smog so thick and black it weighs down across the streets, a smoldering breath from the depths of hell itself... The sky was crimson in hue, for the most part because of the toxic pollution that spewed from large smoke stacks that protruded from the concrete and metal ground that seemed to litter and patch work the entire thing together. The buildings were tall and narrow often with large smoke stacks pumping the same black smog into the air as the giant ones did... The streets were paved with a rustic gold color and oil and blood washes down either side of the streets into the large gratings that seem to lead else were, deeper into the hells of Vexa. The streets were rampant with people, some young and some old. Each one dressed in a cult like black regalia, no one looked too much different from the rest, each one was armed and held no expression as they walked down the streets. These people were adorned with a shining white glow that emitted from around there pupils, this was a sign of the Protected. The Protected are a group of religious fanatics that worship Ertai, each one is protected by his blessing to live out eternity forever studying and increasing their mental capacities, each one as deadly as the next. Deeper into the city, automobiles and other technological advancements beyond that of Gaia or most of the known Planes existed here. Large mechanized android like objects stood at rest, each one covered and oozing with oil, as if they were bathing in it. The culture of people had changed as well than that of the other city. These people were rugged and normal individuals, refugees from other planes of existence, robbed from their own world and puzzled into the Vexa. These beings just wanted to exist, just wanted to carry on their race and lives. Each one different than the rest, some humans, some even that of Demons or other magical beings, some even of alien like nature, as if from entirely different dimensions. Here you will find anything you could ever desire that could kill someone or many someones. Weapons dealers, black smiths, gun smiths and even mechanics reside here, huddled around the smokestacks like cockroaches. They often fight and rob each other, living in nothing but large shacks composed of metal and stone. Deeper into the city you go, the cleaner it starts to get, the sky opens up as a massive blue dome of sky. The spiraling crimson hue and the smog just flow around the center, where the large industrial business tower of Vexa resides. This is where all business and commerce takes place in Vexa, lights and signs cover the large onyx building for about three hundred feet, and after that it is nothing but a large glass monolith filled with some of the most greedy and crooked minds you would ever come to know... Each one vying for what the other has, murder and deciet run thick, thick as the smog of the outer city... Casinos and brothels run ramped down each street, crooked con artists and thug rogue gangs... This was a city with no name a man could name, it was that city of sin... Key Locations: arrow The Cyo Corporation - This is the large industrial building in the center of the city. This building is set in the description of a large office building very regal and vintage in style. Dark black walls and black onyx floors mask every floor in an immaculately eerie and greedy manner. The building has no a top to the building but the number of floors are endless ripping through the entire plane of existence including Vexa and the other nine layers of this world. Secrets beyond understanding are hidden deep with in this formal abyss of knowledge and greed. arrow The Vindication Network Headquarters - This large establishment is located towards the center of the city and exists as a large warehouse like area. It is a compound where the most elite bounthunters and assassins work. Their skill for technology knows no bounds, pirating and stealing machines from all other planes of existence. If you are in search of something this is where you will find it, the black market district on the outer wall of the compound is where drugs, firearms and smaller items can be traded for or bought, this is where you can also ask for even bigger things, maybe getting you into the compound itself. arrow The Crimson Night District - On the other ends of the city, past the streets paved with gold and ash come the darker and more sinister sections of the city. The buildings are all tight and close nit to one another, some even broken and smashing into the sides of others, creating an almost eerie bastardize version of a jungle. Pipes and wires protrude from the dark cracked streets, made of some unknown stone and metals. The people here are lustful and wrathful, in constant strife with one another, many gangs and criminal societies are said to exist through the ally ways and sewer systems. Anything you could lust for can be found here, if sex and violence run through your blood, the crimson night paves the way... So very bright... arrow The Inner City - In the center of the city exists everything peaceful and normal with more safe areas but still just as deadly in different aspects. This is where mostly all commerce takes place through streets and streets of fine shops and diners, bars and more. This is also where the Cyo corporation is located at the direct center of the city. This is also an island which has three bridges connecting it to the outer city limits and beyond.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:27 pm
The ground shook and panic rolled through the city streets. Cars slowly lifted from the ground as a large tear in the plane had opened right above the Crimson Nights District. The poor and sick ran for hope only to find themselves pulled into the chasm and ripped apart.
Enter Ertai
Large brass doors opened out of thin air as he walked from the inside of his dining chambers into the chaos at hand. Each soul knew who he was and cheered with an uproar that nearly shook the buildings. He looked around and took a deep breath and slowly began to stitch back the tear in the fabric of this reality, he acted with a quickness as it slowly began to seal once again, almost with out effort. His hands clenched as the people once lost were beginning to be stitched back into existence one inch at a time. Everything for a moment remained as if nothing had happened.
Ertai looked over to Johanna and smiled, extending his hand to her.
"Come please."
|
|
|
|
|
|
His Name - Ertai Vexic Captain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:31 pm
Johanna stepped past him through the door, taking everything in with a curiosity usually saved for benign spectacles. She was utterly mystified, "What was that?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:41 pm
Ertai ran his fingers down his jacket and rolled his neck slightly before returning his eyes to her. He spit to the side slightly and that cigar came to place gripped tight in his perfect grin. His eyes soon shifted to a crimson shade, his hair went from that golden brown to jet black, slicked and sinister.
"That was the Multi-verse telling me I'm not welcome here and my little synthetic world will soon crumble and I won't have the strength to save it or escape, it's kind of ironic in many ways, the pale rider of all existence trapped in a world that he made from worlds he destroyed. Makes me laugh sometimes."
He looked to the side slightly just as another rip came tearing right through their own section of reality. Ertai swiped his hand up causing the rip to deflect at a 90 degree angle away from Johanna and himself. Instantly the ground started to suck inwards to this tear.
Ertai slammed his hands together and instantly the tear vanished and everything that was done slowly became undone.
He shook his head and looked back towards her.
"Hostile world eh?"
He laughed manically and looked up towards the towering smoke stacks and skyscrapers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
His Name - Ertai Vexic Captain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:49 pm
"That is what's happening to your world?" She stared as the rip opened and caused destruction that Ertai fixed. Her horror didn't stem from it happening to the city, but that it should happen in the first place. ******** regarded him openly; she didn't seem very concerned for his sinister change in appearance. That is what's happening?" She repeated the question.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:57 pm
"You see Gods or whatever it is you people have for beings such as myself, have odd little rules and quips that place upon ourselves to make our existence more meaningful. When I was created I was created void of love, hope, happiness... I was created to destroy and balance, I am the universes hand of death, creating and destroying constantly. I devour the souls of beings I've vanquished, forever trapped in a hell which is me. Yet I was created from a single soul, which is Ertai, myself, this physical avatar which is my body of what I look like. Granted I can change to any of the beings I have consumed, which is endless, I can look different every second for all of eternity and never have the same face twice. I digress, you or Josie was given the main portion of all my powers when I proposed to marry you, this has escaped me because I cannot take it back but it must be given, and only given if you love me truly and honestly. Since Josie left how ever long ago it was, I watched as my world slowly crumbles, and with it so do I. Yet I am comfortable with this demise, since it is only befitting for a man such as myself... But I wish not to die, I wish for you to love me or not, one last chance for myself to redeem myself in your eyes..."
He looked at her and returned to a softer image of himself, his black hair had vanished and the cigar dissipated.
|
|
|
|
|
|
His Name - Ertai Vexic Captain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 10:55 am
"That's a big burden to lay on someone you just met." She was absolutely repelled by the destruction taking place around them. Slow it may be, but just the fact that it was happening as they spoke shook her to the core. Johanna regarded the dying city with a small frown, "If it's all going to be destroyed how come these people are still here? Then you could let nature --Or should I say unnature, given that this isn't natural?-- take its course." Remembering that Ertai had said he didn't want to die she amended, "I don't think people are supposed to live forever anyway."
Here was one of the key differences between Josie and Johanna. Josie had been terrified of death. She would have betrayed anyone or anything to survive even at the expense of her soul. Even if it tore her up inside no task was too menial if it kept her mind and body sound. It was not a surprise that she had gone insane and created Johanna; it was surprising that it hadn't happened sooner. This new woman was just discovering herself, and she would either learn to fear death just as much as the woman before her or accept it as the toll for being alive.
She made no remark on how stupid she thought it was that he had trusted someone so implicitly. Trust was flaky. Power was eternal.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 1:37 pm
Ertai started to walk forward slightly away from Johanna, and for a moment a brief look of sickness crossed his face as he actually stood and took a moment to look at the city he had created. It smelt of soot and blood, a foul place to be indeed. The displaced living beings, dirt covered faces were being ignored by the protected, which glow with unholy aspirations. Something had suddenly snapped inside of Ertai, as if it took countless millenniums for him to see what he had done, a micro chasm of tragedy.
"It is a large burden to place upon someone Johanna..."
"These people remain because they don't have the means to escape... Every inch of soil on this plane has been taken from other worlds... My conquests led me to destroy and utterly remove countless planes of existence, I have made countless races of beings extinct, just because..."
He took a deep breath and walked back over to her, placing his hands upon hers, his hands were soft and gentle yet had a roughness about them, like that of a swordsman. His intense eyes stared down at her.
"No one lives forever... But some of us die forever..."
He would move in closer to her, brushing his hand over her cheek and as he did this the world around them shifted once again, this time the location was much more familiar, yet something had drastically changed...
The sky above was black yet it held light to the world. The garden that once had been so vivid and bright was nothing but smoldering ash and shadowy figures.
"The shades and wraiths have taken over what once was a beautiful place... Yet nothing compared to you..."
|
|
|
|
|
|
His Name - Ertai Vexic Captain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 1:51 pm
"You're talking about an afterlife." She eyeballed him skeptically, not removing her hands from his grasp but not particularly seeming as if she wanted him to touch her. Johanna still didn't understand why, if he had the power to manipulate planes, he just sent the unfortunate souls living here somewhere else. She couldn't imagine that he wanted them to suffer with him, but that seemed just as likely as anything else when the solution was so obvious.
When Ertai reached to touch her cheek Johanna's head jerked imperceptibly; she turned her gaze from him and --though without seeming to notice-- took her hands from his and rubbed her palms off on her dress. She studied the dead garden around them with pointed interest, "I appreciate the compliments, but I really wish you wouldn't."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 2:08 pm
Ertai watched her body language as if it spoke to him in very subtle ways. In his heart he couldn't give up on her, yet his mind was insisting on it. He motioned with his hands as the dark spirits that loomed around Johanna and himself, a soft faint light came flickering forward, causing the encroaching darkness to retreat.
"I feel my words fall on deaf ears... There is no way you could ever love someone like me Johanna, you see I am in an odd situation... It seems as if I am going to die... Isn't it?"
Ertai walked off slowly away from Johanna. He made his way slowly down to the waters edge of a small reflective pond. A large tree loomed over the surface, as if it was growing towards a faint light in the sky... The tree was nearly dead, all but for a small flower which hung over the water so gracefully. He sat himself down and looked into the water, tossing a stone gently in, his actions seemed almost to reflect that of a child.
"Mother what would you have me do..."
He whispered out softly and the wind started to pick up...
|
|
|
|
|
|
His Name - Ertai Vexic Captain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 2:25 pm
She watched him, and while she did a pretty speech began to form in the back of her mind. It would be so easy to bring him to her, to have what she was denying herself and had been since she could remember (which wasn't very long). But to love him..? The thought was as enticing as it was revolting; it made her think of those great jungle flowers that reek of the sweet, cloying smell of decay. Yet the more she considered it the more she thought that her revulsion might not be because of him, but because of the choice she perceived he was forcing on her. Rather than be allowed to choose for herself whether or not to love him it seemed Ertai was putting her in a position where her conscience wouldn't allow her to walk away. Not from those poor people stuck here in a dying world and not from a man who was collapsing in on himself like a supernova.
And so Evil turns in on itself. Johanna shook her head, saddened by the truth in that thought.
She joined Ertai by the water's edge, standing a few feet behind and to the left of him. If the wind picking up registered with her she gave no indication that it did. "I'm sorry, Ertai," Johanna began, "I guess... I don't know. I don't know what you expected from me. That I should declare myself yours in a matter of hours? We don't know each other; how do you expect me to respond?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 2:53 pm
"Qua resur get ex favilla... Judicandus homo reus... Huic er go parce deus..."
Ertai simply spoke as he arose from his seated position by the waters edge. He adjusted the collar of his shirt and slid his fingers slowly down the edge of his coat. His pale optics shifted to the waters edge once again before he walked up towards her. He extended his hand to her as if to help her up onto the path once again, the next location was unknown.
"Johanna I ask nothing of you but a chance to love and be loved again. If this fails then I have failed, you once were Josie and we each lured each other into something, yet yours was a dagger where as mine was a loving embrace. Hours, weeks, years whatever it takes until you either give up and leave or stay with me. I simply place this upon you not as a burden, because the burden is all mine, a insurmountable task as to make the woman I once loved, love me again with no recollection of who I am or she is."
He paused and waited..
|
|
|
|
|
|
His Name - Ertai Vexic Captain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:06 pm
"If you didn't want to place the burden on my shoulders you should have thought of it before showing me the city," Johanna answered stiffly. She didn't take his hand but neither did she move away; she merely stood there, watching, waiting, wondering what he was going to do next. If one thing was certain it was that this woman was infinitely more stubborn than Josie ever was. Tougher, too. But then Josie had had to be broken down into what she was. Johanna was something new and had yet to experience real hardship. As yet it was doubtful whether she would bend or break under pressure.
At length her stubborn frown eased. She sighed, her gaze softening as she stared past him and into the water of the pond, "s**t. I suppose if I really wanted to leave I'd have gone by now. Truth is I just don't know where I'd go even if I did walk out."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:12 pm
Suppressing his presence, he stalked them from the same retreating shadows that the other dark beings dwelt in, roving the streets almost hypnotically. A mask shielded his airways from the stifling smog being pumped into the city of sin. That gust of wind and the distraction of the plane ripping itself apart was what he needed to get himself in closer. He stunk of the same foul-smelling grease and oil that the rest of the place and the slums he'd traveled through to get here did. With the wind at his back and Ertai's hind quarters to him, he approached from behind and to the left of the god, shooting along the bank of the pond.
"I simply place this upon you not as a burden, because the burden is all mine, a insurmountable task as to make the woman I once loved, love me again with no recollection of who I am or she is."
Ertai paused and waited..
The masked stranger floated in on the wind, the soles of his combat boots barely brushing the grass along the water's edge. With the flicker of his right hand, he made the over-the-shoulder draw soundlessly. On any other terms, attacking Ertai on his own plane of existence would be suicide, but insanity ran in Corourke's family. His eyes widened and he shot the girl a look that told her to bite her tongue as he struck with a downward slash from the draw that would sagitally section the Vexic from head to a*****e. His broadsword emitted the faintest hum as it sung through the air, vibrating countless times a second, possessing magical enchantments that allowed it to slice through brick and stone as if they were cheese.
"That's a little twisted, isn't it?" his muffled mouth moved behind the mask in response to Ertai's words.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
His Name - Ertai Vexic Captain
|
Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 3:21 pm
"Very well..."
He moved his hand back from her and stood next to her looking back at the pond, the wind had stopped slightly, yet the overwhelming scent of ash poured through the air. His eyes moved upwards to the large tree, the tree which had been since Ertai could remember.
"This tree holds the soul of my family... My mother... Brothers... Sister... Sons... Daughters... I have fought so hard to protect it yet... Yet it is dying and with it my link to talk to my past. Yet one thing is Bertine... They all know you, they speak to you yet you cannot hear... Qua resur get ex favilla... Judicandus homo reus... Huic er go parce deus..."
He paused and touched the large flower gently, it's petals curl up slightly, giving off a sweet scent, unknown to describe.
"When from the ashes shall rise... Guilty man to be judged... Lord, have mercy on him..."
Was all he would say as he picked the last flower from the the tree, and with it came a soft gasp, almost a whimper as it slowly started to crumble and die, turning to ash and blowing into the pond. A vivd show of colors came, then all was silent and still. Ertai placed the flower to the side of her hair, and walked away from her but as he did he caught a reflection and he turned instantly throwing up his right arm and with it pulling energy from all around the forbidding garden into the form of a blade.
Sparks slide down the edge of the blade as he looked at the masked man who just attempted to take his life. Ertai pushed forward causing him to dash back, sliding slightly in the ash and dirt.
"Who dares point a blade at my back..."
Ertai snarled slightly as he threw up his hand, clearing the area of debris. He couldn't sense this mans presence, and this was bad.
"So I guess my powers are failing me as we speak, if I cannot sense your very presence on a world bound to me then this will be a problem..."
He snapped his wrist and his blade shifted into a more polished version of itself.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
